Posted: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 12:00 am
President Bush owes the nation a better explanation than the one he has provided thus far regarding the government's justification for ordering the National Security Agency to compile millions of private phone records since 9-11.
It's just us going after al-Qaida again, Bush said in a brief statement Friday, apparently in response to a May 11 story in USA Today. The story disclosed that three of the nation's largest phone companies had turned over their customers' private phone records to the government, which has amassed an enormous databank.
Bush said there is nothing to worry about here. Americans' privacy was being "fiercely protected," he said. He denied that assembling phone records amounted to data mining because nobody was listening in. (Unlike the NSA's domestic wiretaps, which Bush also has defended as legal and as nothing more than our government trying to track down al-Qaida.)
Apparently 64 percent of those answering a Washington Post poll saw no big deal in the government compiling phone records and poring over them. Maybe they don't watch any police shows. Because when police take a good look at a person's phone records, they can tell all kinds of things about who they're calling and when.
It could be that we've been desensitized to the loss of our personal privacy, thanks to the number of times our privacy is routinely invaded by the sale of personal information regarding our purchasing history, age, interests, etc.
However, a growing number of Republican critics, most recently Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, raise a larger issue: If our government is resorting to this kind of needle-in-a-haystack-search data assembly, what does that say about our progress in tracking down terrorist cells?
Speaking Monday at a seminar in Washington, D.C., Sununu said, "The important question is whether or not this is activity that we think will yield a good result and whether we think it's activity in which the federal government should be engaged."
Further, the real terrorists are known by intelligence experts to routinely use and discard stolen cell phones. So under this program, the only one likely to be pinpointed by this search is the poor schlub whose cell phone was stolen.
That leaves a disquieting question: What exactly will the government do with that information, now that it has gone to such trouble to assemble it?
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are going to hone in on such questions Thursday, when the hearings begin on Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director.
Hayden headed up the NSA when these domestic spying programs began, so it's fair to predict that he'll be facing some grilling about them.
Republican committee member Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said Sunday, "There's no question that his confirmation is going to depend upon the
answers he gives regarding activities of NSA," according to the New York Times.
We hope that the public will be listening. Much depends on it.